1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character pattern producing apparatus for producing a cursive character pattern while indicating a character by its outline font.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventional character pattern producing apparatuses are disclosed by Japanese Patent Publication No. 2-36955 or Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 62-9388. According to methods employed by these apparatuses, character shape information representing character shapes are stored, whether or not to form two adjacent characters in a cursive style is determined, and the character shape information of these two characters are combined if they are to be formed into a cursive style for producing a character pattern including connected characters.
Such a method of producing a character pattern as disclosed by these two documents enables cursive character determination only about two adjacent characters, and a cursive processing between elements included in a single character is not possible.
There is also a method of retaining character shape information representing the contour shape of a character as coordinates of skeleton points representing the skeleton form of the character and single line width parameter at each skeleton point in order to perform a cursive character processing of characters. According to the method, however, restrictions in terms of shape are imposed in designing character shapes, and a font cannot be freely designed.